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Flood Resilience
Flooding is a frequent natural hazard in Scotland which can have catastrophic impacts.
A changing climate, combined with changes in how we use our land and how we live means that more people and properties will be impacted by flooding in future.

 

We have already seen significant changes in our weather systems in Scotland, including more rain during the winters. The weather extremes we experience are also changing, with wettest days getting wetter, as well as more intense storm events.

Sea level rise is already having a widespread impact on parts of Scotland’s coast and we can expect to see more coastal flooding, erosion and coastline retreat – with consequences for our coastal communities and supporting infrastructure.
A stoney beach by the water's edge
Recent high-profile events, such as named winter storms, have highlighted the magnitude of such events  and the consequences which flooding can bring – not just physical but social and economic.
With these changes set to increase, we need to work together to ensure that Scotland’s places and communities thrive. This means taking a collaborative and fair approach to flooding and adapting to climate change, creating places and communities that are more resilient and which also deliver benefits for health, wellbeing and biodiversity.
At Verture we have over thirty years experience of fostering such a collaborative approach. We have established networks across sectors and broker engagement of those with a broad range of perspectives on the role of nature based solutions, engineering solutions and placemaking approaches. We have a long history of delivering research, events, sharing and informing  good practice and policy.
We have a strong reputation in delivering an annual Flood Resilience conference, the leading event in the Scottish flooding community calendar, in its 20th year now attracting more than 700 delegates.
We also run a Coastal Change Knowledge Exchange programme, more information on that coming soon.

Flood Resilience Strategy for Scotland

At the 2025 Flood Resilience Conference, Scottish Government formally launched Scotland’s first Flood Resilience Strategy.

 

The purpose of the Strategy is to change Scotland’s approach from ‘fixing flooding problems’ to creating flood resilient places; to lay out the principles to improve flood resilience, and to set out strategic changes that are needed, including how to build community flood resilience and engage a broader range of partners to deliver more diverse flood management actions faster.

Scotland’s Flood Resilience Conference

Verture has been running this annual conference (previously known as Flood Risk Management) for the last two decades, bringing together flood professionals and practitioners, researchers, policy makers and communities to share, learn and network.
Since 2020, conference have been recorded and videos of the sessions can be viewed on the our Vimeo channel.

 

The 2025 conference was held on 28 and 29 January at Dynamic Earth. See the event page here.

Implementing the Flood Resilience Strategy

Follow the publication of Scotland’s first Flood Resilience Strategy, the 2025 conference focussed on Taking actions to implement the Food Resilience Strategy.

 

We focussed on the key themes of People, Place and Process, delivering a diverse programme of talks, workshops and discussions.

More on flood resilience